


come knocking, and I will answer

by exbex



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: First Time, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Pining, Unresolved Romantic Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-11
Updated: 2017-11-11
Packaged: 2019-01-31 19:03:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,594
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12688338
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/exbex/pseuds/exbex
Summary: inspired by this tumblr post:Yeah, I’ll take an order of “I won a romantic weekend for two and I don’t have a significant other, would you, my friend, go with me.” with a side “What do you mean there’s only one bed?!” and for desert I’ll take “I went along with this because I’ve wanted to tell you I love you for years and you were always dating someone else.”





	come knocking, and I will answer

Kent really should have anticipated this.

One bed. How had he not figured there’d only be one bed? _Wrong question Parson,_ his brain helpfully supplies. _Remember how you were fantasizing about how it’s still a little cold in early June in PEI, and about how Bitty was definitely going to be all “Lord, it’s cold,” and you were going to offer to warm him up, and platonic cuddling would turn into romantic cuddling and eventually, down the road, would turn into bouncing him on your dick, or, you know, him drilling you. Or both, really. Preferably both. So you see, the real question is, why do you love being in pain so much?_

Okay, Kent had figured there’d only be one bed. But Bitty, Bitty must not have even…

“Right side or left side?” Bitty asks as if he’s asking Kent if he wants coffee or tea.

“Uh, like, if we’re facing the bed the way we are right now, or if we’re laying on it.”

Bitty gives him one of his indecipherable looks. “Do you want to be closer to the door, or closer to those windows?”

“Um…windows.”

“Okay,” Bitty proceeds to place his case right next to the bed, as if it’s the most casual thing in the world. “I’m famished. Let’s go see if they can recommend a good place for dinner.”

**

“My stars Kent. This pasta really is melting in my mouth. I thought they were exaggerating.”

Kent takes a sip of wine, and congratulates himself on his restraint. “Yeah,” he says. It really is incredible food. It really is the most charming island on earth.   
Bitty really is a great friend. Kent really is completely fucked.

“I mean, of course we’ll get some lobster before we go, but this is brilliant.” The silence that they fall into then is comfortable, for all that Kent is dying slowly over his unconfessed feelings. Really, it’s a mercy. Kent should just be grateful for the abundance of good fortune in his life. Bitty is a great friend, Kent is happy, the season didn’t end with a Stanley Cup but there’d been a good playoff run regardless, everyone is healthy, as far as Kent knows. 

Everything is great.

“Are you okay? I mean, I know it’s been six months, but…” _My name is Kent, and I am addicted to being in love with people who are unattainable and generally fucking things up all over._

Relief courses through Kent, the kind that makes one light-headed and tingly in the fingers, when Bitty’s face breaks into a soft smile instead of settling into a hard look. “I am,” he says. “You know, when Johnson just dropped this in my lap, my first thought was ‘I can’t accept this, it’s too generous,’ not ‘I can’t accept this, I don’t have a boyfriend anymore.’ He reaches across the table to squeeze Kent’s hand. “I’m really glad you decided to come with me.”

_This is fine,_ Kent thinks. _I can survive this._  
**  
“Lord but it’s chilly.” Bitty pulls a sweatshirt over his head and yawns. “I’ll try not to octopus you in the night, but apparently Canada doesn’t believe in summer.”

_There are worse ways to die,_ Kent thinks.

**

There’s a quote that Kent didn’t understand when he was younger. Something about how people aren’t afraid that they aren’t capable, but that they’re afraid because they know they’re incredibly capable and powerful beyond imagination. Maybe it’s a sign that he’s really self-involved, but Kent figures, as he’s lying awake listening to Bitty breathe evenly beside him, that it might apply to his pathetic love life and its three stages. Stage 1: Pine after someone who doesn’t love you anymore. Stage 2: Fall for guys who aren’t only straight, but who are your teammate and best friend (Jeff), or who go from hating your guts to being your best friend (Alexei). Stage 3: Fall for a queer guy who hates your guts, is dating your ex, who then becomes your best friend, who then becomes available but you’re too spineless to do anything about it. 

There’s a safety in falling for people who aren’t attainable. Kent hates horror movies, hates the way the images linger behind his eyelids hours later, but falling for people who aren’t remotely attainable is kind of like watching one and getting the thrill of being scared, of knowing that whatever is happening on the screen doesn’t exist in reality. People can frown over it all they want, chastise him for not having the guts, worry over him for living in a bit of a fantasy world, for not taking a risk that could lead to something good, but Kent’s chased people who don’t want to be chased. It’s worse than pathetic; it toes the line of contemptible.

**

It’s easy to tell himself that things are good enough when he’s so wrapped up in hockey that he doesn’t have time to feel anything besides a desire to win. It’s easy to fall asleep at night, if out of exhaustion rather than contentment. It’s easy to feel satisfied with a win, to swallow the frustrations that come with a loss, because they bury any other frustrations that might be lingering on the edges, waiting for a chance to slip in.

It’s not so easy when he’s sitting in a lighthouse restaurant, watching the waves crash onto the shore, and glancing over at his normally loquacious friend staring dreamily out onto the ocean. It should be the easiest thing in the world, to just sit back, full of delicious food, and bask in it, just like Bitty is. But the reality has marched into Kent’s headspace. Hockey has a shelf life, and it’s a short one. Short enough that there’s going to a lot of years to fill up afterwards, and Kent’s not sure what he’s going to do with those years.  
It would be easy, in a way, to reach across the table, take Bitty’s hand in his as if it’s nothing, easy to suggest a walk along the shoreline.

But it’s always easy to destroy everything.

Maybe this is enough.

**

“Did you ever read that poem?”

Bitty is a talker. He can talk pretty endlessly, about a long list of topics. In some people that’s an unattractive quality, but Bitty’s a pretty good listener too. Furthermore, he’s one of those talkers who follows a predictable trajectory, and his silences are pretty well-timed and there aren’t many surprises. This, however, is a curve ball. Fancy liberal arts college degree or not, Kent has never pegged Bitty as someone who’s into poetry, Beyonce lyrics notwithstanding.

“Random,” Kent replies. “Also, what poem?”

“No Man is An Island. John Donne.”

“That’s a poem? I thought it was just a saying.”

“It’s a poem. Basically, it goes something like, everyone is part of the mainland, and if even a part is washed away, the whole is diminished. The title makes it sound like, each individual person needs the rest of society, but the poem is really saying that society needs each individual.”

Kent doesn’t know what to say to a Bitty who is suddenly into poetry analysis. He finishes the rest of his beer in one gulp.

“Did you notice, when we were out today, how much this tiny island just looks like the mainland, with the rivers and the farmland and cows and the grocery stores. If a little bit of dirt gets washed away, no one is even going to notice. If you got dropped into the middle of the island, and you never traveled beyond a half-mile radius, you wouldn’t know you were on an island.”

“That’s…” but Kent doesn’t have a way to finish his sentence, doesn’t know what he’s trying to say.

“John Donne was wrong. There’s a whole lot of us, Kent Parson, who would just drift away and the world wouldn’t even notice.”

They’re sitting in a tiny restaurant, the kind of place that serves pretty good pizza on paper plates. It’s not the kind of place to be waxing philosophical. Kent’s about to say something, takes that little inhale of breath that will give him enough to etch out two or three words.

“Let’s get out of here,” Bitty says, and his chair makes that scraping noise across the linoleum floor and Kent exhales.

They wander out and back to the boardwalk. It’s the last moments of dusk before the stars come out. It’s quiet, and the silence is companionable but Kent feels weighted down. He lets his gaze drop to the sand.

“Did you see that note on the back of the bathroom door? The one that asked people not to use bath towels at the beach, because the red dirt stains them?”

Bitty doesn’t answer, and Kent is forced to look at his raised eyebrows.

“That’s what you’re like, Bits. You’ve got everything in my head marked up like that. And if you were gone, I’d…I’d notice.”

Bitty blinks, once. Then a smile starts spreading across his face. “Kent Parson, that is the most romantic thing anyone has ever said to me.”

Kent’s first kiss was on his fifteenth birthday, with a girl who had been eating vanilla ice cream with fudge and caramel. Whenever Kent has fantasized about kissing Bitty, that’s what he’d imagined it tasting like, sweet with a little tiny hint of salt. Bitty just tastes mostly like beer, with a little bit of pizza sauce and Italian sausage. It’s kind of perfect.

**

Kent figures he’s like a pine cone. Meaning, when he falls for someone, it’s as if he’s been set on fire. He burns hot and fast and he cracks open and his seeds come pouring out and infect everything around him.

He thinks about it, looking at Bitty sleeping soundly next to him. Bitty is more like…something that burns slowly and steadily and doesn’t hurt, something that just spreads warmth and light.

He sighs. How did he go from being someone who didn’t think before leaping to being someone who overthinks everything?  
In lieu of an answer to an admittedly rhetorical question, Kent cranes his free arm to find his phone. They have to get downstairs within the next forty minutes if they want breakfast, and they’ll need to check out afterwards. 

“Bits,” he whispers as he plays connect-the-dots with the freckles on Bitty’s cheeks. “We have to get up.” His stomach swoops in a not unpleasant way as Bitty cracks one eye open. 

“Too early,” Bitty wrinkles his nose and glares, and Kent falls harder.

“Breakfast,” Kent replies. “Pack. Back to Halifax. Back to Boston.”

Bitty opens his second eye and gives Kent an appraising look. “Sex. Pack. Back to Halifax. Back to Boston. Sex.”

Kent bites down on his tongue so hard that tears come to his eyes. “We’re going to be too cranky for sex if we skip breakfast.”

Bitty just smiles in a way that can only be described as salacious and skims his fingers across the front of Kent’s briefs. Kent lunges forward and plants the clumsiest kiss of his life right on Bitty’s mouth, teasing his lips apart with little finesse. When he pulls back he smiles triumphantly.

The look on Bitty’s face is momentarily one of disgust, but then he switches to smug. “I was planning to have you come in my mouth, actually.” He leers, “Breakfast and a shower.”

**

By the time they make it downstairs, their hair is still wet and they only have eleven minutes to spare. The proprietor just gives them a knowing look and brings them pancakes and coffee.

**

Kent waits to bring it up until they’re settled in their seats at cruising altitude. “Bits, what you said last night…do you really think that no one would notice if you…drifted away?”

Bitty sighs and leans against Kent so that their shoulders are pressed together. “Not anymore. I guess not for a long time. But you know how those ideas that we get when we’re kids never totally go away.”

Kent gets it, all too well. He leans over and presses his lips to Bitty’s head, just for a moment. “I worry,” he says, almost in a whisper, “that I’m like the ocean.” He pauses, not really knowing how to get his point across. “That I just…mess things up because I’m too much.”

Bitty reaches for his hand, and Kent lets him take it. “Aren’t we quite the pair,” Bitty murmurs. “You thinking you’re too much and me thinking I’m not enough.”

**

Kent wakes up eight minutes before his alarm is set to go off. He peers at the phone screen for a second before switching the alarm feature off and shifting so his feet are touching the floor. He freezes as Bitty stirs next to him, and then slowly stands and stretches, resisting the urge to glance over his shoulder lest he lose every bit of resolve and slide right back into bed.

He puts every ounce of concentration he possesses into making a perfect breakfast, because then he’s not thinking about the fact that his flight leaves in five hours and that it’s going to be almost a month before he gets to see Bitty again.

**

Kent had thought that taking a tax to the airport was a really good plan, seeing as that way he wouldn’t be taxed with having to walk away from his boyfriend and then feeling miserable during a five-hour flight. Saying goodbye and then getting into a taxi meant that he’d have more moping time before boarding, hence he’d feel slightly less miserable on the plane.

He had severely underestimated the temptation.

“Honey,” Bitty chides. “You really can’t miss this flight.”

“I’ll retire,” Kent retorts in between kisses. “Be your trophy husband.”

Bitty’s laugh makes Kent want to drop his luggage and toss Bitty over his shoulder. “Honey, everyone knows that I’m the trophy in this relationship.” He stops Kent from leaning in for another kiss by pressing his thumb against Kent’s bottom lip. “I just heard the taxi pull up.”

Kent sighs and pulls away. “There’s an envelope in the drawer next to your side of the bed. Don’t open it until after my flight’s taken off, okay?”

Bitty raises an eyebrow, but gives Kent’s hand one last squeeze. “Okay. Now get out of here.” There’s something wistful in his voice, something that makes Kent’s shoes feel like they’re full of lead as he walks out the door.

**

Kent switches his phone on the moment the flight attendant chirps an announcement that it’s alright, but he shoves it back into his pocket and forces himself to wait until he’s found a quiet corner of the airline lounge to shove his hat down to cover his eyes before he takes it out again and thumbs through his messages.

He bites his bottom lip, but he can’t stop himself from grinning as he listens to his voicemail.

“Kent Vincent Parson, you are the sweetest, most handsomest, most romantic man on this planet, and I would never believe it if I weren’t staring at the evidence with my own eyes.”

Later, after he’s home and he’s settled himself in, when the ache of missing Bitty will already be sharp, he’ll call. For now, he types out a new message, knowing that Bitty will be able to read between the lines.

_Just admit that I have better taste in poetry._

The reply comes almost instantly, and Kent closes his eyes against the rush of feelings that flood through him.

_I love you too._

**Author's Note:**

> The envelope that Kent left for Bitty contained this poem: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/53092/i-am-offering-this-poem
> 
> And I also recommend listening to the poet read it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sm7U9BtPXXM


End file.
